Fortuna's Children

Schonberger, Paul; Schonberger, Imre

This is an important and unusual story about a small town in Austria and how the locals helped a small group of Hungarian-Jews to survive. The Fahidi family was deported from Hungary by the Nazis in 1944, and put on the cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz. However, when the trucks arrived at the Polish border, everybody was taken to Strasshoff concentration camp near Vienna. Shortly afterwards, Austrian civilians came to the camp asking for laborers; unusually specifying a group of 25 family members and their friends. Imre, his family and friends were picked by the guards and taken to Mistelbach-ander-Zaya to work in an experimental horticultural center. They expected the worst, but are proven wrong, as the townspeople bring gifts of food to the malnourished prisoners, and the local police protect them after arrest by the SS.